INDIA

CHAPTER |]

EARLY INDIA

Ny

STATISTICS. — British India and Burma together occupy 905,000 square miles
of the Continent of Asia, and the native states and dependencies of India
absorb 611,000 more, This is exclusive of Baluchistan (130,000 square
miles), which is, in fact, as much a dependency of British India as any
native state within the frontier. The total population of this area amounted
to 287 millions of souls by the census of 1891, showing a net increase of
27% millions during the preceding decade. In 1gor the total had increased
to 231,000,000. This equals about 15 per cent. of the entire population of
the world.
The commerce of India, represented by exports and imports, amounted in
1899 to £124,850,000 and 495,499,000 respectively, the increase during the
last sixty-five years of the century being fifteen-fold,
The revenue of India in 1000 was £29, 500,000 sterling. nearly three.
fourths of which are derived from land.

IN no country in the world has geographical position
relatively to surrounding continents and seas shaped the
history and the destinies of a people more surely than in
India. A land of promise, where Nature offers her gifts
with lavish hand, and where the soil is peculiarly favourable
 to the reproduction of mankind, yet forming a sort
of geographical cul-de-sac with a few notable gateways
leading thereto from the north, and no exit, except by sea,
to the east, south, or west ; India has been from time immemorial
 peopled by immigrants who have multiplied
within her borders with such prodigious vitality that no
recent wave of conquest sweeping through her historic
gates has made any permanent impression, whilst each in
turn has added something to her perplexing ethnography.
No single name existed amongst the early settlers